When it comes to the local food movement, no one puts his money where our mouths are quite like Edward Farrow, the executive chef of The Café at MIM. On any given day, this cafeteria-style museum restaurant (so much prettier and just plain better than a museum cafe is ever expected to be) creates changing menus that are 75% local.

Salt. You see, Arizona doesn't mine edible salt (just for swimming pools and other industrial purposes), so Farrow got his pals in San Diego to ship him 25 pounds of salt harvested from the Sea of Cortez, which is just a little over 200 miles away.

Does this strike you as extraordinary effort on The Café's part? Does me. But this almost loco devotion to local is nothing new, according to Farrow, who earns his paycheck from Bon Appetit, a California-based food service management and catering company with 450 institutional clients, including the prestigious Getty Center in LA, the Art Institute of Chicago and The Modern Art Museum in Forth Worth.

For the same event last year, Farrow -- whose impressive resume includes the famous River Cafe in Brooklyn, The Inn at Little Washington and Kai here at home -- says one of his sous chefs drove to Yuma to buy wheat, which he brought back to Phoenix and milled himself at a local mill. This year, the café will be using flour from Hayden Flour Mills -- which the museum chef views as a real boon for local-lovers.

Shishito peppers from Maya's Farm

Courtesy of Tim Lenz

Farrow explains the difficulties in being 100% local. Sugar, for instance, isn't grown in AZ for culinary use, so more often than not, the café uses local honeys (Crockett's, for one), agave nectar and apples from Willcox as sweeteners. Turkey is another product that's hard to find locally year-round, as are eggs, given that Phoenix's extreme heat throws off laying cycles.

But Farrow, who says he's allowed to run the café as if it's his own business (meaning -- without corporate dictates such as grilled cheese on Tuesday) does the best he can, striving to source locally as much as possible. He and his crew have even tried making their own yeast -- which they're doing for this event but won't continue to do simply because it's hard to maintain the kind of consistency baking requires.

Just for tomorrow, The Cafe will pull non-local stuff like Coca-Cola off the shelves, although they'll accommodate customers who insist on Coke. Otherwise, local-leaners will find local sodas, local coffee, local beer and wine from AZ's major producers.